The Tea Party Wants to Teach Your Kids About the Constitution

Come September, public schoolkids could be receiving a tea party-fueled tutorial in the Constitution—or at least, the movement's version of it.

In 2004, at the urging of the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), Congress required any school accepting public money to teach students about the Constitution during the week of September 17. Most people are unaware of this "Constitution Week" requirement, and few schools have apparently complied with the mandate.

Enter the Tea Party Patriots, one of the nation's largest tea party umbrella groups, which has seized on this obscure congressional mandate, urging its members to "adopt a school" during Constitution Week. The group recently blasted out an alert to supporters that included instructions on how to pressure school officials to follow the congressional requirement. If they refuse, TPP advocates staging a protest and alerting the media to the school's failure to adhere to the law. "Patriots should not have to remind schools to teach the history of the most important document in our country," TPP's leaders write on the group's website explaining the new campaign. "That we have to do so is an indication of how awful the public school system has become with regard to teaching U.S. history."

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